I spent a good hour yesterday morning and ano...

March 16, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I spent a good hour yesterday morning and another hour this morning trying to get one of the key custom items finished. It's a leaf boat, used by the elves as an impromptu form of water transportation. It works reasonably well, though I may have some trouble getting the PC in or out of it. Right now it's a placeable with a pseudo hole in the middle of the walkmesh. Seems to work.

I also spent yesterday actually playing someone else's module, which is extremely rare for me. Sam wandered down in the morning as he usually does and wanted to play Star Wars Jedi Outcast, which we usually do. I was sick of it, and suggested Neverwinter Nights. We had a great time, playing The Sunless Citadel. Sam was a half-orc fighter, doing the vast majority of the work as I, a healer, stood back and admired the carnage. For a four-year-old, he did quite well, occasionally getting frustrated trying to select chests to bash them with things blocking the view.

My design hat kept popping on despite myself. I kept noticing the annoying things, like big areas with nothing in them. I suspect it's because of the translation between PnP and a CRPG. With PnP you can say "we keep going down the corridor", but with the game you have to actually do it. At one point, we went back to town to resupply and it took a good ten minutes. But there was a lot of good things about the modules - the HCR, lootable corpses, henchmen AI, and other rule changes made things a bit more interesting. I liked how many of the placeables had scripting attached to them to allow translation of runes, searching objects, and so on. The story was a bit odd - only at the very end did I have a feel what was happening, and that was in only because the enemy decided to get "chatty". That's a hard cliche to avoid (the enemy revealing all plans, right before they try to kill you), and I've fallen for it myself at times. It's not terrible, it's just a common resolution to a story. I think my preference is to reveal it slowly throughout the adventure.

Well, I've written far too much. The adventure was great fun and I was hoping to play the sequel today, but it appears to not yet be out. Maybe we'll take another look at the Hall of Fame and grab another one. Or perhaps we'll leave the computers behind and hike around in the forest.